Dismissal of Principal and Vice Principal, Suspension of Teacher in Hamadan School After Student Punishment Incident

Following reports of a student being punished by classmates at the request of a teacher, the Director General of Education in Hamadan announced that the teacher has been suspended and the principal and vice principal of the school have been dismissed. According to Iranian television reports, a science teacher in a seventh-grade class at Shahid Maqsoudi School in Hamadan hit a student and then asked other students to hit the same student as well. Several students confirmed in interviews with Iranian television that they hit the student at the teacher's request, stating that they would be punished if they did not comply. The school principal also mentioned in an interview that the teacher did this as a 'joke' to 'change the atmosphere of the class.' On Friday, December 7, Mohammad Pourdavood, the Director General of Education in Hamadan Province, announced that the teacher has been suspended and the principal and educational vice principal have been dismissed. According to Mr. Pourdavood, these three individuals have also been referred to the Disciplinary Committee of the Education Department. Although corporal punishment of students is prohibited by education laws, images of physical punishment in Iranian schools occasionally surface on social media and mobile phones. Meanwhile, last week some media reported that the principal of Iman School in Mahshahr, Khuzestan Province, hit a student and struck another student in the face with a hose. Following this, Mojtaba Dinarvand, the head of the Education Department in Mahshahr, announced that the case of this principal would be sent to the Provincial Education Department for review. Rahim Mirshah Valad, the Director General of Performance Evaluation and Complaint Response at the Ministry of Education, previously reported that 80,000 complaints were registered in the years 2014 and 2015, with nearly 2,000 complaints related to corporal punishment of students. He added that 1,274 complaints were deemed 'valid' and 650 'invalid.' He did not provide specific figures for the years 2016 and 2017, only stating that complaints were received during those years as well, similar to 'previous practices.'